When making 100% lard soap...

[Healinya]

Does anyone have a favorite sf%, water discount and all that? I bought a giant bucket of lard at Walmart awhile ago and barely use it. The bucket is opened, but sealed with the mighty layer of glad press and seal lol... It still smells fine (well, smells like lard anyway lol) I will cry if I let it go bad - someone please encourage me to make 100% lard soaps, lol.. anything I should know? cp, hp - no difference?

I believe laundry soap is just 100% lard with maybe a 1% sf, is that correct?

 

[donniej]

For laundry soap, I'd use no superfat. Your lye isn't 100% pure, so you always have some superfat whether you like it or not

If you plan to wash with it, you may want to add some coconut or castor oil as 100% lard makes virtually no suds. It still cleans just fine though.

 

[carebear]

I get a nice lather from 100% lard - more on the dense, rich side than the big bubblage but I enjoy washing with it.

I use it for a body soap more than face, and do a 5% superfat.

 

[Healinya]

Thanks for feedback... I think I'll read up on laundry soap a bit more before I dig into that. For now I have 30 ounces of melted lard waiting for the lye to cool down... I'm already impressed with the fact that all I had to do was jot down "266, 114, 850" on a piece of paper lol.

 

[Healinya]

well, it was going fine lol... I had more time to work with it than I thought I would, I guess I was expecting that I would have to work fast. So I poured it (even had time for an in the pot swirl). After pouring, I left it for 15 seconds to get a skewer - it was pretty solid when I turned back to it and using the skewer to swirl it wouldn't have worked well, so I didn't. I had it in the warm oven for 20 minutes and when I checked on it, it looks like it remelted. Looked like water on top, and unfortunately about a tablespoon of that cloudy liquid had spilled over the side. Zap test was positive. I'm just leaving it for a bit and keeping it in the oven... I have never cut into a loaf to find it seperated before, so I'm not sure how to identify it... oh well, I'll learn

You can see the water on top, it jiggles like thin trace....

 

[carebear]

lard is a tricky one - it reverses trace quite often. don't know why but it's happened to me more than once with 100% lard recipes.

I now SB to medium trace, let it sit for a minute to make sure it's not going to separate, then pour. An hour later I see it separated and (don't try this at home folks LOL) SB the sucker right in the mold.

Really, though, you need to be especially sure it's reached a good trace or it will separate.

 

[Healinya]

Ah, I see... I poured on the thinner side. I poured it back into the pot (pretty funky looking lol), scraped out as much as I could, blended it to a nice medium thick trace, poured it in a new mold... and now five minutes later it doesn't looked like it's firming up at all (not getting thinner tho).. I'll wait, like you say, to make sure it doesn't seperate again. thanks for the input

who knows, the whole thing could be ruined anyway - since I have no idea how superfatted it is because I wiped the lyewater that spilled over instead of trying to return it to the pot..

 

[Healinya]

I know this is nothing fascinating, but I figured I'd show the updated version.

It's gelled. The gel didn't break through the top, which I have seen before and never had a problem with (that I know of). I only notice ash on it when that happens, so figured it had something to do with it.

 

[carebear]

partial gel - when it doesn't get all the way to the edges.

and if I make soap very high in hard oils (like, say, 100% lard) then I tend to get thick ash if I don't achieve gel so that's probably it.

 

[Healinya]

It's fully gelled in the picture above (except for the little bit in the left corners) I left it and went to bed. This is it this morning.

BUT, these are them sliced lol... never happened to me before, but I have seen the pictures... I'll store it away just to see what happenes to it, but I doubt anyone will ever use it.. I'm giving up at the moment lol... gotta go to work.

 

[donniej]

It's been my experience that the "ring" you see is caused by insufficient heat. The soap will still be OK after it cures. To prevent this, you can heat your oils up more or cover the mold after pouring.

Too much heat however and it will hot process and foam up and out of the mold.

 

[Healinya]

I just tried using this... nice lather... but definately not something you should use in jail ;-) It was so slippery, i could barely hold it.

I definately need to retry tho - I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure I lost some too much lye when it reversed trace.

 

[ilovedoxies]

Hummm... i make lard soap all the time and I've never had a batch do that.

I use 100% lard and sometimes I use 10% castor. I don't have my recipe handy but I'll check it later. Heat the lard up to about 100-105, cool the lye water to the same. SB to trace and pour, it always turns out nice and white.

 

[Max]

When making 100% lard soap

OK, so I've been trying to make 100% lard soap using Armour Star lard. I've made it about 4 times and every time it swells up in the mold (so that I have to take the box apart to get it out, then it cracks up and crumbles. I've made lots of soap before using other oils and have never had this problem before. I am able to rebatch it and it makes fine soap, but don't want to go to this trouble. WHAT am I doing wrong. I know it can't be this hard.

 

[IrishLass]

The swelling is a tell-tale sign that your soap is overheating. Do you insulate your mold at all?

IrishLass

 

[Max]

The swelling is a tell-tale sign that your soap is overheating. Do you insulate your mold at all?

IrishLass

I use 3 1/2 X 18" box molds, and all I did last time was cover with a sheet of freezer paper and wooden cover. Do you think I should not cover at all, or am I heating the lard too much to melt it? I usually heat to about 150 degrees to melt (it seems hard to melt), then cool down to 100 before adding the lye water at 100 degrees. Thank you SO much for helping me.

[/quote]

 

[Max]

The swelling is a tell-tale sign that your soap is overheating. Do you insulate your mold at all?

IrishLass

Oh, and this time it didn't swell and crack until AFTER I took it out of the mold. I thought it was going to be fine, but a few days later it swelled and cracked.

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[IrishLass]

Wow! That is really odd and a totally new one on me, and I am at a loss for words. I've never heard of a soap swelling and cracking a few days after taking it out of the mold. Hmmm..... very interesting! Delayed gel, maybe? I've heard of delayed gel happening before, but always within the context of the soap still being in the mold with those who try to prevent gel by sticking the soap in the freezer and then taking it out of the freezer a day later. Mind you, I've never made a 100% lard soap before, though (65% is the highest I've gone with lard), and I also don't know if you noticed the soap going through gel while still in the mold, so I'm not exactly sure what's going on here. Can you provide any more details? Can you take me through your process step-by-step?

Hopefully those who have made 100% lard soap will chime in with their experiences.

IrishLass

 

[Max]

Wow! That is really odd and a totally new one on me, and I am at a loss for words. I've never heard of a soap swelling and cracking a few days after taking it out of the mold. Hmmm..... very interesting! Delayed gel, maybe? I've heard of delayed gel happening before, but always within the context of the soap still being in the mold with those who try to prevent gel by sticking the soap in the freezer and then taking it out of the freezer a day later. Mind you, I've never made a 100% lard soap before, though (65% is the highest I've gone with lard), and I also don't know if you noticed the soap going through gel while still in the mold, so I'm not exactly sure what's going on here. Can you provide any more details? Can you take me through your process step-by-step?

Hopefully those who have made 100% lard soap will chime in with their experiences.

IrishLass

This is the recipe I use: 8oz Armour lard, 16.60 oz lye and 41.16 oz water. I mixed the lye & water together, melt the lard, cool both to 100 degrees, then mix together. I've been using a mixer since my stick blender burned up a few months ago. But I make other soaps using a mixer and they do fine. Trace happens 10 - 15 minutes later, then I pour into molds lined with freezer paper. Coverd lightly with freezer paper then a wooden cover. About 6 hours later it was somewhat solid, but not enough to take it out of the mold. The next day it was firm enough, so I removed it from the mold with no problems, but it was still too soft to cut. I thought GREAT, it didn't swell and crack. But 2 days later when I was getting ready to cut it, it hd cracked and swelled up so that I had to trim it to get it into the cutting box. Some bars were salvagable, but about half will have to be rebatched. Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? I'm about ready to give this up and use a lard base with other oils.

 

[IrishLass]

This is the recipe I use: 8oz Armour lard, 16.60 oz lye and 41.16 oz water. I mixed the lye & water together, melt the lard, cool both to 100 degrees, then mix together. I've been using a mixer since my stick blender burned up a few months ago. But I make other soaps using a mixer and they do fine. Trace happens 10 - 15 minutes later, then I pour into molds lined with freezer paper. Coverd lightly with freezer paper then a wooden cover. About 6 hours later it was somewhat solid, but not enough to take it out of the mold. The next day it was firm enough, so I removed it from the mold with no problems, but it was still too soft to cut. I thought GREAT, it didn't swell and crack. But 2 days later when I was getting ready to cut it, it hd cracked and swelled up so that I had to trim it to get it into the cutting box. Some bars were salvagable, but about half will have to be rebatched. Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? I'm about ready to give this up and use a lard base with other oils.

Aha! And also yikes, eeeek, hoochiemama, and whoa nellie!!! :shock: The problem is very easy to spot now. If what you just wrote (8 oz lard, 16.60 oz lye, and 41.16 oz water) is really and truly the recipe you used and doesn't contain any typos, then your proprtion of lard to lye to water is something no one should ever attempt at home.....or anywhere for that matter. :shock: No wonder you got the weird results you did! It all makes sense to me now, and it will to you, too, in just a moment.......

I think what happened is this (and it's so simple that I think you're maybe going to want to kick yourself for it). :wink: Did you use SoapCalc to figure your lye/water amounts? If the answer is yes, then my next question is this- When you typed the recipe in, did you forget to change the amount of your recipe from the default 'Pounds' in the 'Weight of Oils' box over to 'Ounces' instead? (I'm think it's safe to assume that you may be kicking yourself about right now). I typed your recipe into SoapCalc using 8 pounds instead of 8 ounces and it gave me those huge lye/water amounts, which is fine for 8 pounds of lard, but not if you are using only 8 ounces.

The actual amounts of water and lye should be more in the range of 3 oz water and 1 oz lye.


HTH!
IrishLass